Tomorrow is Maribel's 1 month old birthday!

Can you believe tomorrow Maribel will be 1 month old?? Seriously, how could a month already have gone by? She's so adorable and she seems to change a little every day. The picture above was from Tuesday (at 4 weeks old) after her bath. She's always been strong when it came to holding her head up, but now she's ALWAYS holding it up. We're starting to see little smiles when she's awake. They're more like half-smiles, but they're still oh so cute. She seems like she wants to "talk" but so far her noises are primarily squeaks. Her crying is now really loud instead of her little squeaky, fake sounding cries that she originally displayed for us. And we're picking out more of our features now - she has my dimples, the shape of my eyes, and my ears. Everything else is 100% like her daddy.

I won't lie though - it has been a challenging week so I apologize for abandoning my blog but I haven't had the energy (physical or mental) to write. We MAY have found a decent combination to help combat the gassiness. Originally the VentAire bottles seemed to be working, but eh, not so much. So now we're back on the Dr Brown's bottles with the Gerber Good Start Gentle and knock wood, we've had a very good day today with very little gassiness (and no regurgitations the last few days, I might add.)

If you recall from my last post I was hoping to ditch supplementing with formula but nope, that just isn't happening. In fact her formula intake has increased. I love breastfeeding but damn, this girl is just not satisfied. She will breastfeed from one boob for 15 minutes. Then 20 minutes later she wants the other boob for 15 minutes. Then she'll drink a couple ounces of formula and I'll pump. and the cycle continues. I'm beyond worn out, she's tired of crying to eat, it just wasn't a happy environment. So right now we're doing primarily bottle feeds with formula. I'm doing a few feedings a day on the breast and also pumping 2-3 times a day so we can mix a bit in with her formula and freeze the rest for future use. It's just an amazing difference on how full she feels after eating. Even if we give her a bottle of breastmilk, she's back to snacking every 20 minutes whereas the formula does fill her up for longer. So that's where we're at right now (and yes, it seems to change every few days as we try to find a rhythym that works.)

We're still having to walk laps around our apartment with her in the evenings so it seems that colic has arrived. We've tried gripe water to see if it would help and it's hard to say if it really is helping, but with that, bicycling her legs, and walking her around in various positions, we're getting through the tough times in the evening. She does love her bath too so that we know is one part of the evening where she feels good and relaxed. At least if it's colic, there is an end in sight, even though that end could be a couple months away.

As for me, I've been trying to fend off some post-partum depression. It's kicked in some this week, probably because it's been quite challenging with sooooo little sleep (Maribel was up every single hour last night and DH was away for work so it was a long, long night) and that was on top of many days in a row with minimal sleep. I was so tired today that I pumped 2.5 oz of breastmilk and carried that bottle and a dirty formula bottle to the kitchen. I got to the sink and mistakenly dumped the freshly pumped breastmilk down the drain...UGH!! I lost track of how many times I cried today but between my fatigue, my terrible cooking (long story from another day but suffice it to say I really am a lousy cook), my weight that is going up instead of down, my car needing to go to the shop AGAIN today for ANOTHER $400+ repair (last repair for a similar amount was only a month ago), my "failing" at exclusively breastfeeding, my baby who won't stop crying at night (yes, she eventually stops but if you've ever been around a colicky baby, you know exactly how exasperating it can be) and me wondering how I'm going to handle things when DH goes away to an Army course in the future - well, all of that is enough to make me feel pretty darn shitty. I know I'll start feeling better soon and for now I've got DH and my sister who can watch out for me to make sure I don't go off the edge, since I know PPD can really sneak up on someone.

Next week we have her one month doctor's appointment (with a vaccination, ouch) and we make our first trip to upstate NY to see my family. The baby, dog, & I will be spending a week up at the farm where Maribel will get to meet her Grampy, her big brother, and her other niece that she hasn't met yet. It will be interesting to see how she does on the car ride (just under 5 hours) too so I'll at least have a few things to post about late next week. For now though, it's time to start pumping again so we'll talk again soon.